If you’re here, then you’ve probably been judging competitive Magic for a while now. You’ve done tons of constructed events. A pinch of Pioneer, a slew of Standard, and a whole mess of Modern. Player meeting, pairing top 8, collecting decklists, you’ve been there, done that. But what happens when your LGS asks you to run their newly planned Sealed RCQ? You’ve head judged your fair share of Prereleases and FNM drafts, but Limited Competitive REL is a whole new ball game! Limited events are a cornerstone of Magic, so being proficient in them is important for the development of a judge.

If getting through an event, from deck registration to a top 8 draft seems daunting, don’t worry; this article is here to help. At the store level, I’ve been judging Comp REL limited events nearly exclusively for over two years as of this writing. I’m going to walk you through everything I do, from event preparation to seating your top 8 draft and declaring a winner. Keep in mind that I’ll be discussing things that are specific to Limited Competitive REL events. There’s still plenty of good practices for Head Judges of Comp REL events that don’t fit in the scope of this article.

Next, you’ll also need Deck Checklist sheets. These are specific to each set, so make sure the store has the right ones available. They can be found on the Rules and Documents page on the WPN website. Having them already printed a day or two before will save you any unnecessary delays. You’ll need one for each player in your event, plus 8 more for the top 8 draft. And as with product, having a few spares never hurt anyone! You should also review the Deck Checklist beforehand. In my day, I’ve seen checklists with multiple pages, oddly laid out sections, and even sections for “color aligned artifacts”. Being familiar with the checklist for the specific set will help you foresee common player questions and issues. Players like to forget pens. The store having a few spares available is a great practice! For events outside the US, you should also ensure that your checklists are the same language as the booster packs.

The last part of my preparation for a Comp REL Limited Event is studying the set itself. Knowing the cards, mechanics of the set, common interactions, and potential “gotcha” situations will help make your day much easier. I’ve found that the Release Notes for the set is your best friend, as it can serve as an FAQ. I usually read it two or three times before any Limited event. Hands-on experience with the cards will also help tremendously. Play or judge in a prerelease. Go to a FNM draft. Invest some gold on Arena for a sealed event or two. This will give you insider knowledge about common scenarios or easy places to trip up.

You’ve done your homework, you’ve gotten the necessary materials, and now it’s time for the show! As with any event, arriving at least an hour early is a good practice to give you time to prepare. If the store has not already done so, arranging your product ahead of time will help make your distribution effortless.

Finally, it’s time to seat the players for build time! Note that Eventlink currently sits players in alphabetical order by last name. I’m not the biggest fan of this, as it increases the chances that two family members may sit across from each other, opening up to potential collusion. I’ve seen some judges pair round 1 (also announcing that this is solely for build time) so that everyone is seated randomly. After build, you can break the pairings and re-seat round 1. This is ultimately up to the head judge’s discretion.

Now that everyone is seated cozily in their spot for the next hour or so, it’s time to give your opening announcements. Make sure you don’t put product in the player’s hands yet. Once they get those nice, shiny packs in their hand, their focus will be on that. Your announcements should be fairly similar to constructed Comp REL events, with a few extra tidbits:

• Players should write their name and table number on the top right of the checklist in front of them. This will ensure lists/pools don’t get mixed up.
• Remind everyone that there should be no talking during build time. (We don’t want to start the day with a Match Loss for Outside Assistance because someone said “Oh that rare is busted, you better play it”).
• How/Where to turn in their decklist (I prefer players remain seated until I have their decklist in hand)
• Location of Basic Land Station (Some players may need basic lands as a visual aid – let them know you can bring them an “order” of lands if needed)
• As a last step for opening announcements, I give everyone an overview of what build time will look like. I still walk them through actual build time step by step, but this allows players to have an idea of what will be happening.

We can now distribute product. Make sure you tell players not to open anything until instructed. It’s a somewhat detailed process that many players have either never been through, or have only done a handful of times. You can read about it in section 7.5 of the MTR (Sealed Deck Pool Registration), but I’ll give an overview here as well.

• At this point, all players should have opened 6 booster packs and have them face down on their deck checklist sheet in front of them. These are the cards they now own and will be their sealed pool for today. Players will now swap pools with their registration buddy. Make sure each registration buddy writes their name on the top left of the checklist sheet they just received. Knowing who registered the pool is key in the event an issue comes up later.
• Registration buddies will now have 20 minutes to sort and register their partner’s pool. It should be sorted the same way it is on the registration sheet (this is where having reviewed how the checklists laid out ahead of time will serve you well. They can be kinda funky at times!). Also note that only foil basic lands need to be registered at this time (unless the set has basic lands that can occupy the slot of other cards, in which case all basics need to be registered). Since regular basic lands can be added infinitely, they don’t need to be registered. The checklist sheet accounts for this by only having a “Foil” and “Played” column for basics as opposed to “Played” and “Total” column. Once everything is sorted, they can put it back into one face down pile on top of the checklist sheet.
• After you complete your 20 minute registration, registration buddies will swap back pools, so they now have the 6 packs they opened in front of them. They will now have 30 minutes to register their deck. (+15 minutes extra on pre-release or release weekends)
• Throughout build time, I like to remind players to remain quiet and stay seated until we have their deck list in hand (making exceptions for the usual things like going to the bathroom). Players will begin calling you to collect their decklists. When I collect one, I like to do a courtesy check that we have their name, their registration buddy’s name, table number, and the number of basic lands they are playing. While checking the number of basic lands isn’t technically required, it can be good customer service and help the player avoid a game loss to start the day.

The last thing you need to do is sort your decklists in an easy manner to reference later. I have seen it done two different ways (although if you used Eventlink for seating build, they are largely the same). The first method (and my recommendation) is to make an index (by printing out a player list with seating arrangements for build time, then sort decklists by table number). Then, if you deck check someone later in the round, you reference the index to determine what table they were sitting at during build, and grab it from your pile.

The second method is to just sort them by last name alphabetically. Again, if you used Eventlink, players were seated this way anyways, so the index will sort itself out this way.

Congratulations! You made it through what is probably the hardest part of the day. Now you can get on to pairing round 1 and getting your Swiss rounds underway. Running Swiss rounds is pretty much identical to constructed, with some additional policy that is limited specific (see IPG 3.2 Outside Assistance, 3.4 Decklist Problem, and 3.6 Limited Procedure Violation).

The first step is to seat the draft randomly. Forget about Swiss rankings for now. You will inevitably get some player pushback on this. Questions like “wait so that means I’m playing the person I’m sitting next to during the draft?” or “Swiss rankings don’t even matter anymore?!?” The answer to both of those questions is “no.” But we will get to that in a minute. There are many methods for seating the draft randomly, so choose one that works for you. Notably, Eventlink doesn’t do it properly if you cut to Top 8 draft from the Sealed Event. In the past, I have created a new draft in Eventlink and just input player names as guests. You can also go old fashioned and randomly distribute basic lands with the numbers 1-8 written on them. Once everyone has a seat assigned, it should look something like this:

To answer our player inquiries from earlier, no, pairings are not determined by Swiss Rankings. Instead, pairings are determined by their random seating in the draft and use the same method as any other draft. You might have heard this called “Big X – Little X.” Below is the image of our seating from earlier, but this time with arrows pointing to who they will be playing in round 1.

Provide each player with another deck checklist, then they are given 25 minutes for registering and building their pool. In a similar vein to seating everyone separately, I usually ask all players to remain seated until I have all 8 decklists in my hand. This helps avoid any peeking. If someone needs to use the restroom, I try to provide them with a path that gives them the least ability to see another player’s deck.

Running Top 8 from this point is nearly identical to constructed, with one exception: the bracket is drawn differently. Note that it is based entirely on the player’s random seat for the draft. Their Swiss Ranking solely determines whether or not they get the choice to play/draw in game 1.

That’s it! You’ve done it! Top 8 has played, a winner has been crowned, and you are out of here! Thanks for sticking with me through the journey. Consider yourself prepared for running Comp REL sealed events!

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